Götz of the iron hand

EDIT: Damn, this should perhaps have been in speculation nation! If a mod passes by, please move it.


Well, I'm not sure whether this have been covered before, but I read a science magazine on the train home for christmas, and came across a picture of a man named. Götz von Berlichingen. Appearantly in AD 1509 he was a german knight who lost his hand, and had it replaced with an artificial hand with moving fingers, which allowed him to hold a sword and continue to fight. I think he lived to be eighty or something, quite famous for his time.

Goethe even has written a famour play about him.

He was called Götz of the Iron Hand.

Now I know that Miura has done a lot of reading about medieval europe... does anyone but me think that Miura might have found some inspiration there?

Götz/Guts?

And if anyone knows both german and japanese, how would the name Götz be rendered in katakana? I'm not sure how the german Ö is pronounced compared to the swedish Ö. It feels like Guts might be a reasonable rendition... it's pronounced more similar to A than to O.

Just a thought...

Re: Götz of the iron hand

isn't there already a topic on this??? But for the Katakana part... and I am thinking that its a double O... Go-o-tsu or... Ga-tsu-tsu In anycase its just a coincidence


p.s. Oooo the spell checker is nice! ;D

Re: Götz of the iron hand

As I said before. ;D

Headless Death said:

his name was Götz von Berlichingen, pronounced like Goetz(I think). The name and arm seem to be coincidence, and to quote the interview with Miura to be seen on the DVD,

"Well, it's funny that you mentioned it, but l've heard about this knight who helped a peasant revolution in Germany and the knight's name was Goetz. And he had an iron artificial arm. When I found out about it, I thought it was a strange coincidence." - Miura

Click to expand...

As the link shows, he died at the ripe old age of 82.

Re: Götz of the iron hand

Aaaah cool! Didn't spot that topic.

Thanks a lot.

Re: Götz of the iron hand

There have been a great many discussions, threads, and posts about this, and I think that it's fine enough in the Character Grove section.

Since there's an answer already, feel free to lock the thread or give it a new direction Fishbomb.

Re: Götz of the iron hand

Miura mentioned this person in an interview that was included on one of the DVD releases:

"Not even a historical figure?

Well, it's funny that you mentioned it, but l've heard about this knight who helped a peasant revolution in Germany and the knight's name was Goetz. And he had an iron artificial arm. When I found out about it, I thought it was a strange coincidence. I don't know if he shot arrows from it. It was especially uncanny because I had already started Berserk. I wasn't really thinking of anybody at the time I created Guts."

Re: Götz of the iron hand

Yeah old news, i dont know if anybody else did this but i did some research about Ambroise Paré, who created Goetz arm. He was cool. He created other prosthetics. And he came up with new and working ideas to sterilze wounds and such. If you want to learn more just google his name